The Kremlin and Washington confirm a high-level meeting on Tuesday on peace talks and relations recovery.
The US and Russia confirmed that their top representatives would meet to discuss the end of the war in Ukraine.
The senior officials will travel to Saudi Arabia on Monday, the US State Department and the Kremlin confirmed. They will meet on Tuesday in Riyadh with the intention of laying the foundation for peace negotiations, both sides said.
Yuri Ushakov, foreign policy adviser to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin, were for the trip, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The State Department said it will meet envoys of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East Steve Witkoff.
Peskov said the meeting “dedicated to the possibility of negotiations on a Ukrainian resolution and would be dedicated to organizing a meeting between the two presidents.”
Following reports that US President Donald Trump could meet Putin in Saudi Arabia, Republican leaders said such meetings could happen “quickly” over the weekend.
Reuters news agency cited Peskov reported that the conference will focus on “a recovery of the entire Russian-American relations complex.”
Russian sovereign wealth fund chief Kiril Dmitriev will also be taking part in the meeting.
Rubio said on Sunday that Tuesday’s meeting would attempt to launch a broader conversation, “including Ukraine and accompanied by the end of the war.”
“The process towards peace is not just one,” he told US television network CBS.
alarm
As the talks in Riyadh have been confirmed, European leaders in Paris to discuss their reaction to Washington’s shocking policy changes to Ukraine, where Kiev and its European allies are on the sidelines. We were planning to meet.
Trump announced he intends to speak directly of “Ukrainian peace” with Putin, who unleashed a full-scale invasion of his neighbor three years ago. US officials confirmed they do not expect Europe to be involved over the weekend.
This prompted the US president to warn that concessions to Russia and European security architecture and defence partnerships with the US could be undermined.
Peskov suggested that Moscow is happy with Trump’s approach and said that debate over Europe’s participation in talks about Ukraine’s settlement is premature.
Lavrov later said he saw no reason for Europeans to take part in the ceasefire talks, accusing them of hoping to “continue the war” in Ukraine.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do at the negotiation table… If they’re sitting at the negotiation table with the aim of continuing the war, why would you invite them there?” he was a press conference in Moscow He spoke to.
Before the informal summit in France, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Alvarez said European leaders would discuss how peace negotiations would prevent rewarding Russian invasions.
“An offensive war cannot be rewarded. We cannot encourage others to launch a war of offensive,” he said in an interview with Onda Cero’s radio station. “Today, I am sure Putin will continue to attack and bomb Ukraine, so I have not seen peace on the horizon at this time.”
Last week, senior European Union officials for European foreign and security policy warned Trump against the “contract behind” on the back of Ukraine or Europe, accusing him of “easing it away.”
